After loving DRW-EP-03 (the other Terminal Ambitions epic), this was really disappointing. The setting and premise of the adventure help raise this up a little, but several of the encounters are badly tuned with no one across any of the tables running it getting close to completing them successfully. The final encounter can be hit or miss as a single skill check can end it in 5 minutes with no real threat (to be fair, it's high DC); whether or not that's "fun" is going to vary from group to group. Beyond that, the tiers have the same encounters, which is less interesting to me; I actually wonder if the sheer number of potential encounters was because they meant to divide them up by tier but just... forgot? or ran out of time?

There are 24 encounters to potentially run. Your party will encounter ~8. That's a lot of wasted prep work. There are 26 stat blocks listed, many of which have customizations. There are 9 more NPCs that have combat actions, that aren't included in the stat blocks.

Part 1 Combat objective, the skiff is tiny, and the party has to deal with 10 large-gargantuan NPCs. Space ships are making melee attacks? Time limit means that it's unlikely that most tables will clear the fight, but there is no penalty/reward for completing or failing. Also, multiple mobs with legendary actions in the same fight is rough to keep on top of. Part 1 Exploration objective, played well, tight on time, but not impossible Part 1 Social objective, haven't played or run this one

Part 2 Objective A, no idea how that's suposed to be accomplished. Either there's a lot of handwaving, the party came with the perfect tools, or you treat the whole thing as fluf, replacing everything but the turret fights themselves with a few saves and burn some resources Part 2 Objective B, haven't played or run this one Part 2 Objective C, there is a 2-girls-1-cup reference. None of the prisoner stat blocks are included even though the adventure calls for them to use their abilities. Part 2 Objective D, haven't played or run this one

Part 3 16 different encounters here and your goal is to complete 5 of them. These are kinda hit or miss. Some give an opportunity for minimal RP (yelling at the room filled with prisoners and trying to figure out how to help them escape) Others take a bit longer. Some puzzle are fun and fit well in the time (7 and 9) others are just WTF? (6). The stress mechanic introduced at the very end is interesting, but since it's at the very end of the maze, it doesn't have much effect. That final encounter can also be trivialized by high int characters clearing the hall in 1 turn and low int characters typically being high strength and thus not being effected by the mechanic. The escape mechanic is a neat touch, other than a few issues: 1) there's no clue as to what it is and 2) characters have the option to be huge sized through this adventure, meaning that a single player can consume the entire width of the hall, preventing anyone else from getting close enough (let alone a full party of 7) to fiture out and trigger the escape mechanism. Also, there's no height listed for the room nor tenticles, so flight appears to be a means of circumventing the encounter.

Part 4 A little awkward, could have used a bit more description as to how the machine "defends itself". One of the victory conditions is unknown to the characters, a little description that might clue them into the non-combat option would have been nice. As would a descriptive blurb to warn them of what they are about to stick their hands in.

Treasure - treasure is all route dependent. The 3 items that drop are only available in 3 encounters, 1 of which the players are unaware of the opportunity before picking their objective and the 2 others are based on the assigned route, that the players don't get to choose. It's entirely possible to have a table absolutely crush the entire epic, and walk away with nothing but gold.

Maps - most of this adventure appears better suited for Theater of Mind play. There is no logical layout of the base. The provided maps are generic and don't match the room descriptions. They are too high detail to print out on the table top and too small to scale up for using in a VTT.

Splitting the adventure into Tier 3 and Tier 4 branches (more akin to DRW-EP-03) would have made for a much easier prep job, garunteed loot for the characters, and better replay-ability IMO.

All that said, the adventure does have an epic feel to it. It was also a great intro to the Astral Plane.